Still smarting from SOPA, Congress to shy away from copyright in 2013

RIAA, MPAA admit copyright enforcement not on the agenda for the new Congress.

Last January, hundreds of websites went dark to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act, a controversial proposal to use DNS filtering to censor websites suspected of infringing copyright. Millions of voters contacted their members of Congress to protest the legislation, and as a result dozens of members announced their opposition. The protests ended any serious consideration of copyright enforcement efforts for 2012.

"I think people are shell-shocked from that," SOPA opponent Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) told The Hill's Jennifer Martinez. "It was sort of an unprecedented experience that members do not want to repeat."

Lawmakers "have yet to even hint at efforts to revisit anti-piracy legislation," Martinez reports. She called key figures on the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, which have jurisdiction over the copyright issues. None of them were planning to bring up copyright enforcement issues in 2013.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the chief sponsor of the Protect IP Act last year, remains concerned about the issue but has no plans to introduce legislation. Republican leaders in the House of Representatives were equally noncommittal.

One factor behind the legislators' lack of urgency: Big Content claims it's not interested in passing legislation this year. A spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of America told The Hill that the recording industry will be "entirely focused on music licensing issues and voluntary, marketplace initiatives" this year.

The Motion Picture Association of America echoed the stance its chairman took in October, saying it planned to develop "more robust best practices and voluntary efforts to protect the work of creators and makers while promoting an Internet that works for everyone." New copyright legislation is not on the MPAA's agenda.

Of course, that could change at any time. We have no doubt that the RIAA and MPAA will start lobbying for a SOPA successor as soon as they think they can get away with it. But for now, Congress is still too terrified about provoking another Internet backlash to consider new copyright enforcement measures.

39 Reader Comments

Now we just have to watch them all like hawks because this is NOT over and they WILL try to sneak crap like this past us in some dirty way. Say like an addendum to another Bill. Say, a "Think Of the Children!!!" Bill.

However, they've proven with great regularity and frequency, and we know that they are lying liars who lie.

All this means is that they're going to be sneakier about it.

Exactly.

It's on the agenda, I guarantee it. They are just going to be VERY careful about it. You won't hear about the bill until it passes. And it will be attached to a bill called something like the "Save Orphaned Babies Act" (SOBA), so both parties can vote for it and not feel guilty.

Of COURSE copyright is on the agenda, it was never taken off. It's just a question which underhanded methods will NOW be used to try and pass laws detrimental to ordinary citizens that heavily benefit media corporations without us noticing.

I don't think they are realising that by this point, the whole copyright thing has turned more or less into an all-out war.

One factor behind the legislators' lack of urgency: Big Content claims it's not interested in passing legislation this year. A spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of America told The Hill that the recording industry will be "entirely focused on music licensing issues and voluntary, marketplace initiatives" this year.

However, they've proven with great regularity and frequency, and we know that they are lying liars who lie.

All this means is that they're going to be sneakier about it.

Yes, they said that. Instead of going for legislation, they will go to the big ISPs, probably hand-in-hand with the local Senator AND Congressman, and give them a bunch of suggestions as to how they will help fight "piracy", which if they don't follow, laws unfavourable to them just might get passed [not necessarily SOPA style laws, but others, say, fewer tax breaks for them].

If the momentum dial is reset to zero for the time being, perhaps now is the right time to push it further and get some actual copyright and fair use reforms on the table? What would it take to do that?

Perhaps the best summary is that both parties in Congress want Hollywood's money and approval so badly, that they're not going to pass anything it wouldn't approve of. On the other hand, most of what Hollywood wants isn't what the public wants, so attempts to please it only angers the public. Unable to make Hollywood either happy or unhappy, Congress does nothing.

Of course, the issues run deeper than that. International copyright, meaning the Berne Convention, hasn't been revised since the late 1970s, so it knows nothing of the new technologies. That's pitiful and reaches far beyond our Congress.

Of the two parties, the Republicans offer the best hope. Their pandering to Hollywood does them no good, the money still goes to Democrats. If they had any sense, they're run against Hollywood, get rid of its tax breaks (dating back to the 1950s), and change copyright law to be more in the public interest.

I disagree with what Google was trying to do posting copyrighted books online, but I have no problem with tweaking that awful copyright extension to specify that, if a copyright holder doesn't keep a book, movie or whatever in print under the original title for those last twenty years that were added, it goes into the public domain, say in 2015.

Disney would still be able to protect Steamboat Willie. Hollywood would be forced to bring back for sale all the classic films of the 1930s. And a rule like that would force orphan authors to either surface or see their copyright disappear.

What bothers me about all of this stuff is I feel like we're missing something. To me, between all the stuff with the various ISP's and the media entities...... just seems like there's an undercurrent of control of "speech" in all of its various formats.

Might be a good time to get on the offensive, and start pushing for relaxing of current legislation.

Exactly.

Current copyright law is based on the assumption that copyright is only ever violated for commercial gain. There needs to be a distinction between private copyright infringement and commercial copyright infringement. Make the current laws only apply to commercial infringement (eg: a book publishing company selling millions of copies of a book that they do not have the rights to publish) and write an entirely new set of laws for private infringement (eg: giving a copy of an ebook to the next door neighbour).

It seems like the media industry would like to leave the current excessive laws in place, so they can wave it under everyone's noses while offering something more rational, but still foul, that doesn't involve any court cases at all.

I disagree with what Google was trying to do posting copyrighted books online

Did Google ever intend to do that? I thought they were only trying to make the books searchable. If your search terms matched the content of the book, then they would show you the title of the book and the paragraph your search matched, but never let you see the entire book.

I disagree with what Google was trying to do posting copyrighted books online

Did Google ever intend to do that? I thought they were only trying to make the books searchable. If your search terms matched the content of the book, then they would show you the title of the book and the paragraph your search matched, but never let you see the entire book.

True, but Google forgot to obtain each copyright holder's permission before implementing their version of a search allowed by the Fair Use exemption.

In fairness, it was possible to download the entire text of a book by using carefully tailored searches. Google could have maintained compliance with the intent of the exemption by limiting the text that all searches collectively could display, to a small portion of the total, but that would have required a serious investment to implement.

I think we'll be seeing copyright controls sneaking into the upcoming gun control legislation proposal, at least, if they know enough to address the 3D printing issue. Keep an eye on the portion of the legislation addressing high capacity magazines.

True, but Google forgot to obtain each copyright holder's permission before implementing their version of a search allowed by the Fair Use exemption.

And the entire point of fair use is that you don't need permission for it. That's why it's called fair use.

Quote:

In fairness, it was possible to download the entire text of a book by using carefully tailored searches. Google could have maintained compliance with the intent of the exemption by limiting the text that all searches collectively could display, to a small portion of the total, but that would have required a serious investment to implement.

Yeah, it's also possible to just illegally download a book through other means with a lot less effort.

In all our horn blowing and back patting, let's not forget that American broadband ISPs such as ATT, Verizon Wireless and Comcast are planning a six strikes copyright enforcement program this year, in which they will spy on our web surfing habits and throttle the bandwidth of or even cancel the account of, those accused of infringing.

We may have won a battle against government, but now our ISPs have turned against us.

The Motion Picture Association of America echoed the stance its chairman took in October, saying it planned to develop "more robust best practices and voluntary efforts to protect the work of creators and makers while promoting an Internet that works for everyone."

Wait, they're wanting to promote an Internet that works for everyone and not use legislation for it? Given the overwhelming creativity of problem solving that we've seen from Big Content in the past, I'm not sure how they're planning to do this without resorting to the government to mandate their existence and their profits.

I suppose they could continue trying to subvert ISPs to being their lap/watchdogs for them, but it seems like that has thus far been met with trepidation at best and outright "hell no" at worst.

I'd say this official stance is extremely suspect, and leaves me highly wary of what the MPAA (at least) will be trying to stuff down our throats at some point this year.

Timothy B. Lee / Timothy covers tech policy for Ars, with a particular focus on patent and copyright law, privacy, free speech, and open government. His writing has appeared in Slate, Reason, Wired, and the New York Times.